The state's turnpike czar has been floated as a transportation secretary.
David W. Joyner is a longtime transportation expert who has led the ongoing push for toll roads here as the first director of the N.C. Turnpike Authority.
His name has recently been suggested as a possible contender for head of the N.C. Department of Transportation under Gov.-elect Beverly Perdue.
The son of a state highway commissioner of the same name from the 1960s, Joyner was an assistant to the U.S. transportation secretary and later vice president of state government affairs for Burson-Marsteller, a public relations firm.
In 1994, he moved to Raleigh and founded State Capitol Strategies, a 50-state legislative bill tracking company later sold to the Washington Post. He later worked for Womble Carlyle.
A native of Rocky Mount, he has known Gov. Mike Easley since kindergarten and roomed with him for three years at UNC-Chapel Hill. He later worked as a major fundraiser for the governor.
Since 2005, Joyner has headed the turnpike effort, a job that has given him a lot of contact with the state DOT yet still positions him as a plausible outsider to the troubled agency.
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